Great Burning : 09

Four rider tribes had sent participants to the Great Burning of Ironhope. The Pallish people were the locals with the greatest numbers, including Verindu, the "Master Of The Flame" in charge of the ceremony. The Nykwin, their neighbours to the north, were represented by thirty of their strongest men. Two dozen Thranish riders had travelled over the Sand Hills from the east and then there were the Southern Pralannians, fewer in number than the others and well outside their traditional territory but assertive in attitude. They strutted round the town with loud harshly accented voices and brashly displayed weapons. Klane half expected to see Muttu, but he did not encounter the brutal looking Pralannian aristocrat who had been drinking with the Conclave representitive last night. As for Klane himself, he was the only traveller from the west since the badlands were seldom crossed in these parts.
Passing the market, Klane was conscious of the underlying tensions between each of the tribes and the tribes and the townsfolk. Outwardly it was all good humoured as lore and tradition said it should be, yet underneath the surface something was very wrong. The carrying of weapons to a Burning was unexpected and unwelcome and had never happened before.
Klane felt keenly the normal rider aversion to settled places and to the large numbers gathered here. It seemed unhealthy, as though the taint of History was already staining the land, and his Rider heritage sympathised with the cleansing need for a Great Burning. Yet at the same time in his encounters with the friendly townfolk he coudn't help but empathise with their fears and the barely suppressed arrogance of some of the Riders was alienating. They behaved like an invading army might have done in the ancient days before the Great Forgetting, rather than a part of the natural cycle of life which the Conclave sustained and to which they all subscribed.